CenterNetworks

Evite Attempts To Move Their Platform Forward; Partners With JS-Kit, Flickr, Vimeo and YouTube

Allen Stern — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 15:00:11 -0500

Yesterday I spent some time with the Evite and JS-Kit teams to discuss the updated Evite beta platform launch. From a Web perspective the most impactful update is the addition of JS-Kit's comment system and polling platform. Now when you create an event, a message board is automatically added to the event where guests can speak before, during and after the event. JS-Kit CEO Khris Loux notes that this deal pushes JS-Kit past the blogosphere in terms of integration. This is a major distribution deal for JS-Kit who are just coming off their acquisition of Haloscan.

Other Evite platform updates include integration of Flickr for images, YouTube/Vimeo for videos and Plaxo for contact management. Event pages are more "hip" by adding images and videos. Evite also signed popular artist Robert Holmes to create a variety of new event designs. There's also a private comment feature which allows guests to send notes to the host without the entire guest list viewing them - quicker than an email. More mobile options have been added including event reminders and the ability for hosts to send event invites to guests via sms.

Users can now contribute their own designs as well. This was an interesting area of discussion. All designs are automatically approved and available in the event gallery. The Evite editors will hand pick some of the popular designs to place on their home page. They expect the community to police the user-submitted designs for illegal and objectionable content. Wonder how long before we see something way out there - my odds are one week.

The Evite platform is built in Java. eVite is part of IAC and has 35 team members in Los Angeles. eVite's self-reported stats include: 18 million registered members, 15 million monthly invitations sent, 6 million parties planned and 24,000 Evite invitations sent every hour. The average event guest goes to Evite four times per event.

The Evite team explained that the biggest challenge the face is working on a new platform while still maintaining the current platform.

To be honest, the updates are a bit of a letdown. When JS-Kit CEO Khris Loux and I spoke about this announcement a week ago, I was really looking forward to yesterday's meeting. I was excited to see a whole new Evite that was more 2008 and less 1998. The team certainly was excited to demo their changes and that's what makes this so difficult. But what I've seen is somewhere in the middle, call it 2005. When you are the market leader, it's ok to be years behind.

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TechCrunch Zurich Recap: We Really Do Have Startups Here!

Corsin Camichel — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 13:40:48 -0500

Are there actually startups outside of Sillicon Valley and the USA? For us Europeans this is quite an akward question. Of course there are startups here. And thanks to Mike Butcher and TechCrunch and his European tour we can show the world how great our startup scene actually is. As one of twelve cities on the tour, Mike came to Zurich on July 17th. As a techblogger and engineer myself and as a CenterNetworks writer, I had the great pleasure to attend, take photos and videotape the event.

One of the highlights of the evening was the 20-second pitches each startup had the opportunity to give. We have compiled together a video with all the pitches. If you have 14 minutes and want to see a variety of Swiss startups, check it out below. I've also included some photos as well - over 150 people attended. Please share your thoughts on any of the startups represented in the video.

Editor's note: Corsin Camichel covers technology and European startups on his blog, Geekness. Also, we've provided reviews of two of the startups from the event, Poken and Mixin.

Poken is Touch and Connect Social Networking

Allen Stern — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 12:33:30 -0500

Poken is a new Swiss startup that aims to simplify the way we go from real world interaction to online social networking friends. This week we reviewed DropCard which offers a way to stop collecting business cards and instead send the information through SMS. Poken also is interested with ending business card collection but in a different way.

When you signup for Poken, they send you a keychain fob which contains your social networking information. When you meet someone at a conference, event, mixer, etc and they also have a Poken fob, you tap the fobs together and instantly you are connected on the social networks where there is a match.

Since most people have only one social network they are attached to, is Poken really necessary? Apparently the Poken fob costs about $3 and the team is working on securing advertisers to "own" the Poken fob. For techies the idea seems more interesting and feasible. Also, enough people you meet and in your circle would need a Poken to make the system work. The first person you try to poke (?) and they have no fob, it's done.

It seems like for this type of application to work, it has to connect to the devices we carry already. Poken has an API and perhaps they should be working to integrate their technology (including the fob) into mobile devices? Maybe it could replace the infared port on many mobiles and actually make it more useful. Overall I like the concept and see it as moving the business card conversation forward.

Paul Stamatiou has a good look at physical social networking. Poken is currently angel-funded and is based in Lausanne, Switzerland. Here's their quick pitch filmed by Corsin Camichel at the TechCrunch Zurich event last night:

Wallstrip Gets New Player and Lots of Pre-Roll/Post-Roll Ads

Allen Stern — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 08:43:48 -0500

Back in January, Julie Alexandria took over as Wallstrip host. Today Wallstrip has re-launched their site and video player. There's an updated archive show finder, threaded comments along with the ability to note if you are long or short on the stocks they create videos for.

The player is the big update in my opinion. It's now branded CBS and has pre-roll and post-roll ads. In my tests, there were 30 second and 15 second pre-roll ads on different video loads along with 15 second post-roll ads. The pre-roll ads included Blackberry and Brita. A minute of commercials for a video that's less than 3 minutes long - over 25% of the total time is taken up with ads!

I guess the days of OptionsXpress ads are over.

Here's today's show featuring PapaJohns. I can't say that I find Wallstrip funny or interesting but clearly some others do.

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Prague-based 1C Acquires BUKA For $80 Million

Allen Stern — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 07:46:48 -0500

Yakov is reporting that Prague-based game and software publisher 1C Company has agreed to aquire Russian video game creator Buka. The deal is reported at an estimated $80 million. BUKA generated revenues of $35 million and EBITDA of $10 million in 2007.

Yakov notes regarding Buka, "BUKA, which was founded in 1993, has 250 employees. BUKA published games Far Cry, Half Life series, War Hammer 40,000: Dawn of Warfrom from Western publishers including THQ, Ubisoft, Valve, Codemasters, Lesta Studio, Targem, and CDV."

Check out the list of the top 10 Russian Web sites and the top Russian search engines.

Mixin - Social Micro Timeline and Activity Aggregator

Allen Stern — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 06:42:07 -0500

Mixin is a new Swiss-based startup that aims to aggregate your activities into a timeline/agenda. Basically the way Mixin works is that it can aggregate your event timeline from sites like Twitter and you can also place events directly into your timeline through Mixin.

Here's an example Mixin activity page. It's basically like a messageboard thread where you start the thread with your event. Your friends can then note if they plan to attend, leave comments and embed photos and videos. Events can be sent to Mixin by mobile sms, IM and email as well. Then you can post the event to Facebook and/or Twitter. There's also an API so developers can build on top of what Mixin offers.

There's color-coding for event types so you know whether to pull out your finest shoes or flip-flops. When you setup your friends list in Mixin, you can decide if they person is just an online friend, or if they are a "real" friend by placing a star next to their name. Friend updates can be sent to your email or mobile.

Notifications can be setup daily to remind you of upcoming events. It would be great if you could include an address for the event or a conference URL. There's a link to Google Maps but without a specific address it won't work correctly. A connection into Google Calendar and the other online calendar applications would also round out the service.

You can also embed your timeline into a blog, Website or email. Here's what my embedded Mixin timeline looks like:

Mixin supports OpenID and the overall interface is pretty slick. The "how to use" guide is very interesting as it actually layers on top of the service so you can interact with the service while looking at the help.

This is one of the most interesting services I've seen as of late. It aggregates and leverages content from other sources but can also survive alone. I could see Mixin doing very well if it can gain some level of traction.

LessonWriter Makes Creating Lesson Plans Easy

Allen Stern — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 21:29:35 -0500

LessonWriter is a new NY-based startup that aims to help teachers and instructors create lesson plans easily and in minutes. The company describes their service as, "develops literacy lesson plans & teaching materials from any text in a matter of minutes, allowing teachers to include English lessons in history or science class or to use this mornings news in a comprehensive, standards based lesson." There's a demo video that explains how the service works.

Here's how it works. You find content online on a Web page or in a document on your computer. Copy the content and paste it into LessonWriter. From there, you select the vocabulary, pronunciation and word roots to focus on in the lesson. There's also an option to add comprehension questions in a quiz-style format. LessonWriter then creates a full, printable lessonplan with all of the created content.

I have two comments on the LessonWriter service. First, when the content is copied out of a Web page, no attribution is noted. There needs to be attribution when using another's content for a lesson plan. Second, the end result is a very nicely formatted, printable document. Why not allow students to complete the work online? Answer the questions and allow for the fill-in blanks to be completed. This way the teacher can keep the records in a database on LessonWriter. Would certainly increase the value of the application.

The service is in beta and a note on the LessonWriter home page explains that teachers should proof everything before giving the handouts to their students. Clearly they haven't proofed the Web site yet either - see below :)

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PodTech Acquired by ViewPartner

Allen Stern — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 14:58:35 -0500

Eric "Scoop" Eldon is reporting that corporate podcasting service PodTech has been acquired by ViewPartner for less than one million dollars. Eldon notes, "The investors, from my understanding, were looking to make PodTech more of a blog network, and didn’t see eye to eye with the company’s early employees on what, exactly, the company intended to be." PodTech raised $7.5 million in venture capital.

PodTech has seen it's share of drama in the past. Last October founder John Furrier left the company. Some of their content was questionable at best. Former PodTech employee Jeremiah Owyang left for Forrester, Robert Scoble quit then later joined FastCompany.

A year ago I tried to offer PodTech some ideas on how to at least improve their image. There's room for a corporate video production company in the market. It will be interesting to see what happens to PodTech under the ViewPartner umbrella.

WebTrends Launches Video Analytics Engagement Service

Allen Stern — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 13:50:29 -0500

Web 1.0 analytics service WebTrends is out today with a new video analytics product offering. The new feature will allow companies who use WebTrends for analytics to drop a simple piece of code into their videos so that they can be tracked and integrated into the suite of tools that WebTrends provides.

WebTrends notes, "New solution enables marketers to measure, improve visitors’ engagement with online video regardless of media format." Sure, any format that you host will work fine. But what about if you host your video on YouTube, Viddler, Vimeo, Blip, etc.

If WebTrends and/or Omniture were smart, they would get their tracking code installed in the major video sharing portals. While TubeMogul provides a set of analytics when using their service for video distribution, it lacks the ability to tie into the other analytics packages a company uses. With more and more corporations using YouTube and the others for video hosting and distribution, the analytics company who completes the loop will win.

I've used WebTrends analytics applications since the stone age and was one of the earliest beta testers. Sadly I still barely see any interest from WebTrends to move the analytics conversation forward.

Internship Ratings Helps You Find the Best Internships

Allen Stern — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 11:07:46 -0500

Boston-based Internship Ratings helps you find the right internship by reading reviews and ratings from others on their internships. The service went live about six months ago and currently features 150 companies and has over 200 members. There's also an Internship Ratings blog which features a variety of experts discussing the various facets of internships.

The service appears to be ad-supported. Internship Ratings has a Facebook page but doesn't link to it from their site. This type of service has huge potential if they apply a social layer to the site. Why can't I friend other users? Where's the profile page for users who have signed up that has their social network contact info? Most importantly, where's the internship job board? Why not help students find internships? Where are the video comments? Where's the reviews feed? This site targets one of the most ideal demographic sets, but is barely offering anything more than a simple (but good looking) review board. The service is up for six months, it's time to make it sticky.

Internship Ratings was founded by two Boston University business school students, Stephanie Gurtman and Lauren Grunstein. Amanda Gravel interviewed the pair of entrepreneurs at an event this week in Boston. Here's the brief interview:

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